Nor was the lord’s position made more hopeful by the furious feuds between noble and noble which distracted the provinces in the fifteenth century, and the incessant lawsuits by which the landowners sought to mend their fortunes. In 1463 James Lord of Berkeley made an agreement with the Countess of Shrewsbury that they would have no more battles at law; for he was then sixty-nine, and she fifty-two, and neither of them since their ages of discretion had “enjoyed any three months of freedom from lawsuits.”[498] Nor did they wage their fight in the law-courts only, but carried on an open war by which Gloucestershire had been distracted since 1421, and which proved one of the most deadly of the many provincial conflicts of the fifteenth century. Appeased at intervals to break out again with renewed force, and with the usual incidents of hangings and finings and imprisonments and ransomings, it finally culminated in 1470 in a pitched battle on Nibley Green, where the Berkeleys triumphantly maintained their cause at the head of about 1,000 fighting men, and Lord Lisle, the son of Lady Shrewsbury, who led the enemy’s army, was killed. To country folk and traders this feud of the nobles carried with it, we are told, “the ill-effects and destructions of a petty war, wherein the borough town of Berkeley, for her part, saw the burning and prostration of many of her ancient houses, as her old rent which till that time was £22 by the year and upwards, and by those devastations brought down to £11 and under, where it sticketh to this day, without recovery of her ancient lustre or greatness.”[499] Such a strife was by no means singular or without parallel, and the histories of Norfolk, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, or Lancashire have their records of similar outrages. Exeter was thrown into alarm by a great fight on Clistheath in 1453 between the Earl of Devon and Lord William Bonvil where many persons were grievously wounded and much hurt done: “the occasion whereof was about a dog; but great displeasure thereby came to the city, where presently after the fight the Lord Bonvil sheltered himself, which the Earl took amiss, thinking it had been so done by the city in some displeasure to himself.”[500] The mere instinct of self-protection naturally drove the towns to detach their interests from nobles whose alliance brought disaster and ruin to simple traders, and in every borough statute after statute forbidding the inhabitants to wear the “livery”[501] of any lord whatever, testified to the determination of the towns to cut off from the great people of the country round every possibility of stirring up faction within their borders.
But if boroughs in the ownership of a private lord might secure advantages through his poverty, his misfortune, or his weakness, their position was one of essential inferiority as compared with towns on the public demesne.[502] In the story of Liverpool we have a curious illustration of the fortunes of a borough whose lot it was to fall at one time into the charge of the state, and at another to be thrown into the hands of a noble—and whose vicissitudes at last left it in a sort of indeterminate condition where it owed a deferential obedience to patrons or masters on every side.
Liverpool, which had been granted by Henry the Second to the constable of Lancaster Castle, was resumed in 1207 by John, who granted it a charter of trading privileges. A new charter of Henry the Third, in 1229, gave it a guild merchant and hanse, with freedom from toll, and the rights of a free borough; and on the very next day after this grant Henry gave the lease of the fee-farm to the burgesses for four years at £10 a year.[503] The true foundations of municipal independence were thus laid. The town had its common seal; one of its two bailiffs was apparently elected by the people, and charged with the collecting of tolls for the ferm; and the busy trade with Ireland at that time, and the later advantage of a secure place of embarkation for troops, which became very important as the harbour of Chester silted up, promised prosperity. In the same year, however, the town was granted away by the King to the Earl of Chester, then passed in 1232 to the Earl of Derby; and in 1266 was given to Edmund Crouchback, Earl of Lancaster, and under the Lords of Lancaster Liverpool remained till a century later, when in 1361 it passed by marriage to John of Gaunt.
All hope of freedom for Liverpool died away under its new lords. The grant of the ferm was not renewed for over a hundred years; and at an enquiry of “Quo Warranto” in 1292 under Edward the First “certain men of the Borough of Liverpool came for the commonalty, and say that they have not at present a bailiff of themselves, but have been accustomed to have, until Edmund the King’s brother impeded them, and permits them not to have a free borough.” Wherefore they claim only “that they may be quit of common fines and amercements of the county, &c., and of toll, stallage, &c., through the whole kingdom,” for “as to the other liberties” which they used to have “the aforesaid Edmund now has them.” They quote charters, to show that their ancient liberties had been held direct from the crown, and the court decided that “Edmund hath usurped and occupied the aforesaid liberties,” and ordered him to appear before it; but no action seems to have been taken against him, and for forty years he and his successors went on themselves collecting the tolls.[504] At last in 1356 the lord Henry allowed the townsmen to elect a mayor every year, and the next year the first Duke of Lancaster (father-in-law of John of Gaunt) leased the ferm to the mayor and others to hold for the burgesses for ten years,[505] and Liverpool was thus restored to the same position in which the King had put it a hundred and thirty years earlier. But even now its limited privileges rested simply on the will and caprice of the lord; he might give the lease of the ferm with the right of collecting tolls for the rent to the mayor, or an ex-mayor, or whomever he would; he might grant it for a year, or for ten years, or he might take it all back into his own hands. As a matter of fact questions of convenience and profit seem to have made it advisable to leave the collections of taxes mainly with the town officers. When John of Gaunt granted his lease, at the request of the “honest and discreet men of the burgesses” the articles were embodied in a patent “to ourselves, to the mayor, and to the bailiffs,”[506] and in his time the lease was commonly granted for ten years.[507]
However some of the evils of such a system might be mitigated by the prudence of rulers bent on securing the utmost possible profits from their subjects, there was no real guarantee of freedom or security to the people. But when at the death of John of Gaunt in 1399, the Duchy of Lancaster was united to the crown, there was a new gleam of hope. The ferm of Liverpool, like that of Leicester, was now again paid to the King; an effort seems to have been made to abolish the old uncertain[508] system, and in 1421 Henry V. granted the fee-farm for one year to the corporation, while an inquiry was held as to the value of the property and the terms of its tenure since the time of John of Gaunt. The King’s death however stopped the proceedings, and the rising fortunes of the town were extinguished by the two great families who were from this time definitely settled down on it.[509]
For Liverpool was now hemmed in between two rival fortresses. Sir John Stanley with an army of followers was encamped in a great square embattled fort, with subordinate towers and buildings forming three sides of a quadrangle, the whole planted on the river edge, and commanding both the town and the Mersey, where the Stanleys’ ships were moored, and whence they set sail for their new kingdom, the Isle of Man.[510] Sir Richard Molyneux, as hereditary Constable, held the King’s castle a little further along the river, with its area of fifty square acres defended by four towers, and surrounded by a fosse thirty yards wide, much of which was cut in the solid rock.[511] When a quarrel broke out in 1424 between the lords of these rival fortresses, Stanley collected a multitude of people in the town to the number of 2,000 or more, for he declared that Sir Richard Molyneux “will come hither with great congregations, riots, and great multitude of people to slay and beat the said Thomas (Stanley), his men and his servants, the which he would withstand if he might.” On the other hand Sir Richard had gathered his forces near the West Derby fen, “and there on a mow within the said town we saw the said Sir Richard with great congregations, rout and multitude to the number of 1,000 men and more, arrayed in manner as to go to battle, and coming in fast towards Liverpool town.” A pitched battle was only prevented by the sheriff of the county, who hastened to the rescue at the head of his forces, and succeeded in seizing first Stanley in his tower, and then Molyneux as he rode towards the town.[512]
Such scenes of riot and disorder were fatal to the prosperity and municipal hopes of Liverpool; but there was no escape from their unwelcome patrons. Both the great houses fought for York; and in return Edward the Fourth granted to Stanley the borough of Liverpool and other estates formerly belonging to the Duchy of Lancaster; while Molyneux was made chief forester of West Derby, steward of West Derby and Salford, and constable of Liverpool castle. Richard the Third again gave to the Stanleys large grants in Lancashire, and confirmed the Molyneux people in their offices,[513] and Henry the Seventh favoured their claims. The lords were great and important people in those days, and the little town of no account. Its independence died away, and the troubles of the ferm revived in their old bad form. The question of the lease was never settled, but in any case it passed out of the hands of the corporation. From 1495 it was for many years granted to David ap Griffith, who when he became mayor in 1502 had it renewed to him. Henry the Eighth leased it in 1525 and 1529 to his widow and son-in-law for terms which were to expire in 1566. In 1537, however, it was let to Thomas Holcraft, who sublet it to Sir William Molyneux. The mayor and corporation under Edward the Sixth declared the authority of the Molyneux family to be illegal, and claimed under the old lease granted to Griffith. For many years they fought obstinately in the case, holding perhaps that the house of their old mayor more nearly represented the town and its interests than the house of Molyneux; and one of them was thrown into prison for his resistance under Mary.[514] The ferm was not finally granted to the corporation till 1672; and Liverpool was for a couple of centuries so sorely tried by the necessity of keeping well with the two great families that overawed it as well as with the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,[515] whether in the collecting of its scanty taxes or the choosing of its burghers for Parliament, that the history of its civic developement long remained of no importance.[516]